Todd Snider - Crank It, We’re Doomed - CD DIGISLEEVE

"Lost" album from Todd Snider, featuring previously unreleased songs, recordings, and versions. For the uninitiated, Todd Snider's most hard-core fans are affectionately known as “Shitheads.” If you're a Shithead, you may have heard of an album called Crank It, We're Doomed, the 2007 album Snider shelved before its release for artistic reasons. Crank It, We're Doomed was recorded during an especially fertile period for Snider, and after he decided not to release it, he included five of the tracks on his next two albums — Peace Queer and The Excitement Plan. Snider was trying out new ideas during the Crank It sessions. He experimented with the garage rock sounds he would explore further in coming years as Elmo Buzz and the Eastside Bulldogs. He also mixed folk and funk concepts for the first time, a blend he experimented with for more than a decade before perfecting it on 2021's groundbreaking First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder. So if nothing else, Crank It, We're Doomed is a historically important album because it foreshadowed much of what followed. Snider has spoken to me at length over the years about Crank It, We're Doomed, but I was never able to hear the unreleased album because neither he, nor any of his team, had a copy. Nor did Eric McConnell, who co-produced, engineered and played on the album, which was recorded at his East Nashville studio. Admittedly, the fact neither Snider nor McConnell had a copy of the album seemed remarkable — unbelievable even. Of course it’s believable that the self-professed stoner hippie Snider didn't have a copy, but the fact McConnell didn’t have a copy either just added to the album’s mythos. At one point a few years ago, Snider gave me a list of seventeen songs that may have been on the record, but he couldn't say for certain which songs made the final sequence or what the sequence was. So it remained the stuff of myth, Snider's great lost album. But recently Snider got some good news: Mastering engineer Jim DeMain had a copy of the Crank It, We're Doomed stereo masters. So I finally got to hear his lost album. Snider once told me he was going for an Exile On Main Street meets Desire musical vibe on Crank It, We're Doomed, and that’s an apt description of the sonic space the record occupies. He recorded the album with the cadre of musicians with whom he made East Nashville Skyline and The Devil You Know: guitarist Will Kimbrough, drummer Paul Griffith, violinist Molly Thomas, and either McConnell or Peter Cooper on bass. In addition, Jimmy Wallace played keys. The album’s final sequence features fifteen tracks, although Snider recorded other songs during the Crank It sessions that didn’t make the cut. His cover of Robert Earl Keen's “Corpus Christi Bay” that appeared on The Excitement Plan was among those other songs he recorded during the sessions. The record begins with “From a Dying Rose.” If you're familiar with Peace Queer, you know not only the song, but this particular recording of it. Snider was calling it “Dividing the Estate (A Heart Attack)” by the time he included it on the later record. Up next is a song called “Juice” that will be new to all but Snider's inner circle. It's a swaggering, funky slice of garage rock that lyrically features inside East Nashville jokes and bits of Snider's humorous wisdom. The third track is “Handleman’s Revenge,” which also got a garage-rock treatment. It’s another song that underwent a name change before it was released. “Handleman’s Revenge” became one of the most-requested songs from Peace Queer with the title “Stuck on the Corner (Prelude to a Heart Attack).” The fourth track, “Don’t Tempt Me,” also ended up on a future album, The Excitement Plan. It’s the one other song on that record besides “Corpus Christi Bay” not produced during sessions in Los Angeles with producer Don Was. Snider cowrote the song with country legend Loretta Lynn, and Lynn makes an appearance on the track, singing backing vocals and even taking a lead turn on the second verse. Wallace shines on piano throughout the swinging arrangement. Track five, “The War on Terror,” also appeared on Peace Queer, closing out the record under the title “Is This Thing On?." The version chosen for Crank It was one of nine different approaches they tried on the song. The track is significant because it was the first time Snider integrated funk concepts into his music, in this case riffing on just one chord for the entire song. If you're familiar with Peace Queer, you know that Snider also included an unaccompanied, spoken word version of “The War on Terror” on that record called “Is This Thing Working?." The sixth and seventh tracks are the original recordings of songs that will be familiar to Snider's fans from The Excitement Plan. Track six is “America’s Favorite Pastime,” the hilarious story of when Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Doc Ellis threw a no-hitter while tripping on LSD. There is much to commend the Crank It version over the later version produced by Was. Of course, the later version had Jim Keltner on drums, so it has a certain bounce that the Crank It version lacks, and some might prefer Snider's vocal performance on the later recording. But to my ear, the earlier version has a more interesting arrangement. Whereas the later version features Greg Leisz on dobro as additional instrumentation beyond guitar, bass and drums, the original version features Thomas on violin and Wallace on organ which gives it more of the Desire vibe Snider had in mind at the time of the Crank It sessions. The seventh track is “Doll Face." The later version recorded with Was, Keltner and Leisz has a more developed arrangement, but one that is clearly informed by the stripped-down original Crank It recording. The original version features Snider accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and Kimbrough evoking a pedal steel with his electric guitar using bent notes and volume swells. Track eight, “But Seriously Folks," is another song that will be new to everyone outside of Snider's team and the musicians on the Crank It sessions. Snider shows his Texas songwriting roots on this track, and he acknowledges he was going for kind of a Willis Alan Ramsey feel on the song. The song includes his first use of “botheration,” a word he really likes and has used in other songs and poems since. “West Nashville Ballroom Gown,” which Snider recorded again later for his magnificent 2011 album, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, is the ninth track. The song was written and first recorded by one of his early and important mentors Jimmy Buffett, whose label released Snider's first two records. Buffett's version appeared on his 1974 album Living and Dying in 3/4 Time and featured a typical, slightly too-slick, early-70s Nashville country production. When Snider recorded the song again for Agnostic Hymns, he gave it a Desire feel that featured Amanda Shires on violin and backing vocals. But the first time he covered the song on Crank It, We're Doomed, he took it in a folk direction with Kimbrough as the only other performer. Snider accompanies himself with an acoustic rhythm guitar part while Kimbrough, also on acoustic guitar, adds beautiful lead fingerpicking throughout, as well as high harmony backing vocals on the choruses. Undoubtedly, some of Snider's longtime fans will prefer this version of the song over the later recording included on Agnostic Hymns. Track ten, “Mercer’s Folly," is one of the most fascinating tracks on Crank It, We're Doomed. The title is a nod to Bob Mercer, the late, legendary record man who gave Snider two of his record deals and was more than a mentor to him; more like a guardian angel. But that’s the least fascinating aspect of the song. What's most fascinating is the words and the music appear later on Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, but on two different songs. “Mercer's Folly” is the lyrics of “Big Finish” sung to the tune of “Brenda,” and as such, it totally works. The recording includes some nice lead fills by Snider on harp and Thomas on violin. If the song’s story had ended there, it would have still been a good story. But that’s not where the song’s story ended, and the journey “Mercer's Folly” took to become the basis for the two later songs provides a window into why Snider is such a great songwriter. He is never satisfied to just finish a song. He is always striving for excellence, and that is what fueled the ultimate transformation of “Mercer's Folly.’ The two later songs are both brilliant, and their seeds were planted on this undeniably charming track. “What Made You Do It," is next, and it's another track that will be new to even the most avid Shitheads. It’s Snider's response to Billy Joe Shaver shooting a man in 2007 outside a bar in Lorena, Texas, and it’s a gem. Delivered like a spoken-word letter over jazzy bass and drums courtesy of McConnell and Griffith respectively, Snider basically tells his pal he’s heard all the rumors about the shooting, and none of that matters. But on the other hand, just like everyone else, he’s curious about what really happened and concludes the chorus with “C'mon, man, just between me and you / What made you do it?” The twelfth track is “Last Laugh,” the original recording of another song Snider recorded again with Don Was for The Excitement Plan. Whereas the Was-produced track had a country flavor with pedal steel, the original Crank It recording leans toward garage rock with Wallace's organ and Kimbrough's grungy guitar. This is another track that many Shitheads might prefer over the later version. Next up is the last of the tracks from Crank It, We're Doomed that were released on a later record. With its driving Bo Diddley guitar riff, “Mission Accomplished” became the unforgettable opener for Peace Queer. The final two songs on Crank It, We're Doomed were both re-recorded for The Excitement Plan. In 2007, Snider was calling the fourteenth track “A Slim Chance is Still a Chance.” By the time he recut the song two years later in L.A., he had shortened the title to just “Slim Chance” and given the song a stripped-down acoustic guitar-vocal arrangement. But on Crank It, he gave the song a jubilant garage-rock treatment that undoubtedly will be preferred by some of his fans. It’s easy to connect the dots from this recording of “Slim Chance” to the Eastside Bulldogs’ “Funky Tomato.” Snider’s great lost album ends with the original recording of “Good Fortune.” It has a slightly faster tempo than the later version and a simpler arrangement in terms of instrumentation — acoustic guitar, bass and drums. But the Crank It version has two things the 2009 recording lacks. It has high harmony parts on the choruses courtesy of Kimbrough and Thomas that make for a bigger sound during those sections. It also features an appearance by Kris Kristofferson, who handles the lead vocals on the fourth verse. All that will probably make this version of “Good Fortune” the one some fans like best. The more I learned over the years about Crank It, We're Doomed, the more its importance to Snider's career grew in mind. So when I actually got the chance to hear the record, I was prepared to be a little disappointed. As it turned out, the opposite happened. After hearing it in its entirety, in the sequence that Snider envisioned, it was clear the album's importance is greater than I imagined. It’s the missing link between Snider's two breakout albums, East Nashville Skyline and The Devil You Know, and the albums that followed on which Snider firmly established himself as one of the leading songwriters of his generation.